


Let's give love, get some back

by twoohugs



Series: Advent Calendar 2019 [5]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, First Meetings, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 08:49:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21716668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoohugs/pseuds/twoohugs
Summary: Caspian is expecting to spend the winter break alone in his dorm. Instead, he gets adopted by the Pevensies, and ends up with a family, and more.
Relationships: Caspian/Edmund Pevensie
Series: Advent Calendar 2019 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556131
Comments: 4
Kudos: 221





	1. Caspian

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The More You Give (The More You’ll Have) by Michael Bublé

Caspian sighs heavily and leans back in his chair, looking up at the bland, stained ceiling of his dorm room. The dorm is completely silent apart from the soft music he is playing ('4 hours of soft instrumental for studying' on Youtube). Literally _everyone_ from House Telmarine has gone back home for the holidays－well, everyone but Caspian－and the always-hustling corridors are completely devoid of the usual lively youngsters. 

Dropping his pen, Caspian pushes back his chair and stands up to stretch. Studying business is both hard and boring, but he used to be more tenacious. Since his father's death, however, the grief has lost him some of his motivation and a lot of his strength.

It's time to get some help. Preferably in the form of coffee.

The chilly wind outside is highly effective in blowing away his fatigue. It had snowed sometime earlier that week, but the sidewalk has been cleared and the road is more a muddy mess, so the view outside isn't exactly winter wonderland, but it's still a refreshing picture from his monochrome dorm room.

Which is a nice thing, because the coffee shop closest to his dorm, _Lone Islands_, is closed for the holidayーwhy wouldn’t it, nobody’s staying at schoolーand he has to walk to another part of the large campus, inside the Cair Paravel College, which he had never even walked pass before.

Pushing open the heavy door to _Brits_, Caspian’s ears are immediately assaulted by loud noises. However, it isn’t the noise of a bustling cafe that Caspian had expected, but just the shouting of a few very loud people. In fact, the cafe seems empty at the first sight.

“I baked those to _sell_, dumbwit, you’d better pay for those!” A female voice is shouting.

“Nobody comes anyway, did you even _see_ the campus, it’s empty!” A boy’s voice yells back, sounding like his mouth is full.

“Doesn’t mean you can eat up all the merchandise, you _pig_, I’m taking these out so you can’t- Oh, hello.” A second, younger female shouts as she steps out from the back kitchen, holding a half-full tray of muffins. She pauses when she sees Caspian and her expression changes from a scowl to a bright smile.

“Uh, is this a bad time?” Caspian asks even as he approaches the counter hesitantly.

“No, of course not.” The girl says brightly, setting down the tray and leaning forward on the counter. “What can we get you?”

Caspian looks up at the chalkboard menu. “Uh…”

“No need to rush, just let me know if you want to order!” The girls says, still overwhelmingly cheerfully, and turns to put the muffins into the display. 

“The muffins smell nice,” Caspian tries to make conversation as he scans through the variety of coffee. He only ever order his coffee black at _Lone Islands_, simply because the barista there sucks at making anything else, but having come all the way to Cair Paravel, he’d like to treat himself.

“Yes, and they taste great too! Would you like one?” The girl beams as she straightens up, and Caspian finally manages to read her nametag: _Lucy_.

“That’ll be great. Uh… And can I have a… vanilla latte?”

“Of course! That’ll be £2.50. Are you having those here or…”

“Sure. I could use a break.”

“Great! Please just take a seat.” Lucy gestures towards to empty shop, then turns towards the kitchen and yells, “Ed! Coffee order! Vanilla latte!”

A boy stumbles out from the kitchen, a half-eaten muffin in hand. “Right.” He says, swallowing the huge bite of muffin he undoubtedly just put in his mouth, and gets to work at the coffee machine rather grumpily. Lucy catches Caspian’s eyes and shrugs. Caspian grins back.

“Vanilla latte.” The boy calls after a while, his voice deeper when he is not shouting. Caspian gets up to fetch his coffee, and Lucy follows him to his table, holding his muffin on a plate.

“So, you’re staying at school for the holidays?” She asks as they sit down.

“Yes. I’m from Telmarine, actually, but everybody there is gone for the holidays.” Caspian takes a sip of the coffee and sighs contently. It’s been a while since he’s had good coffee that is not black sludge. “This is good.”

“A compliment from a Telmarine?” ‘Ed’ suddenly appears next to them. “I’m flattered. Edmund.” He said, holding out a hand.

Aware of his house’s reputation of being rich, spoiled brats, Caspian just grins meekly and shakes Edmund’s hand. “Caspian. Don’t get me wrong, your coffee is great, but it doesn’t take much to be better than the muck they make in _Lone Islands_.”

With that, he gets a surprised laugh from Lucy, and an amused smirk from Edmund.

“Still a complement.” Edmund shrugs, his smirk widening into a playful grin.

Caspian finds the corner of his mouth tilting up in an answering smirk as the female voice earlier comes out from the kitchen.

“Edmund, don’t tell me you’re eating another muffin-” she says accusingly as she approaches their table.

Edmund freezes, his suave aura completely gone as he rushes to splutter, “No! No, it’s for the customer!” He says, pushing the muffin towards Caspian so abruptly that he almost dumps the whole plate onto his lap.

“Uh, it is my muffin, ma’am.” Caspian blinks at the young woman who has narrowed her eyes at Edmund.

“Su, you’re scaring Caspian!” Lucy scolds, nudging the muffin to safety. Susan turns to Caspian, ignoring his barely-suppressed flinch, and smiles.

“Hello, I’m Susan. Would you kindly excuse me, I am just stressed out by my lazy glutton of a brother!” Susan practically hisses out the last few words, glaring at Edmund.

“Brother?”

“Oh, we’re all siblings.” Lucy says beside him. Caspian turns towards the younger girl, gawking, when another boy steps out from the kitchen.

“Oh, friend of yours, Ed?” He says, holding out a hand to Caspian, “Peter, oldest sibling, not responsible for whatever these idiots do- not you, Su, you are the sane one.”

“Caspian.” Caspian answers, looking between the four siblings. “So… family business?”

“Kind of.” Edmund says, “Peter and Susan are just here for the holiday, but Luce and I work here anytime we’re not in class.”

“If you’re all alone in your dorm, you can come here instead.” Lucy pipes up, “We'll be here everyday until the next term starts, and we’re just going to do lots of baking and baking and trying out new festive drinks. It’ll be fun!”

“That sounds very nice.” Caspian smiles at her enthusiasm, “But this is my last break before graduation and I have lots of studying to do…”

“Oh, what do you study?” Peter asks, returning to their table with a muffin in his hands. Susan glances at it and sighs long-sufferingly.

“Business.” Caspian answers.

“Oooooh, then you can come study here! We’re all business majors. Graduates in Peter and Su’s cases, that is, Edmund is in his third year and I’m in year one. We can all study together and Pete and Su can tutor us!”

Caspian hesitates. This offer sounds nice, but he just met these exuberant siblings today and isn’t quite sure he should make a commitment for the rest of the holidays so quickly.

“Say, Caspian, what do you think about the muffin?” Edmund asks suddenly, breaking his line of thought.

“The muffin?”

“Yes. Take a bite and tell us what you think.” It's an odd change of topic, but Edmund sound so sure of himself that Caspian finds himself obeying. He takes a bite carefully, and chews. And chews. And chews. It is only because Susan is staring at him intensely that he doesn’t take a gulp of coffee to wash it down.

“Moist.” He says, finally swallowing. “Very, _very_ moist.”

Edmund snickers. “I said so, Su.” He says, then cower as Susan glares at him.

She turns to Caspian, who swallows nervously. “What about the flavours?”

“Very decadent chocolate flavour.” He says, the hard-to-swallow mouthful giving him plenty of time to savour to taste, “Nice tang of orange, it’s nice that I could taste the zest. The chocolate chips would have been a nice touch if the texture is… less… sticky.” He finishes timidly.

Susan stares at him for a moment. He starts sweating.

“You’re much better at this than all of them.” She finally says. (“Hey!” Peter cries.)

Edmund, from his place next to Susan, grins happily. “Tell you what, Caspian, you come here everyday for the rest of the break to taste-test Susan’s stuff _and_ my coffee, and we pay you back with free food, coffee and tutoring if you need it. Deal?”

Looking at Edmund’s smug smirk, Caspian can’t even remember his reasons to not agree. He grins. “Sounds good to me.”


	2. Edmund

“Edmund, that’s not how you do business!” Peter says, more exasperated than actually angry.

Edmund shrugs. “Not like we’re having any other customers anyway. This way, at least, we get someone else to help eat up Susan's experiments.”

“Besides,” Lucy pops up next to Edmund, “It’s all worth it if Ed gets to flirt with Caspian, isn’t it?”

Edmund whacks his younger sister on the head. “No! I just thought he must be lonely, cooped up in the dorm alone-”

“The lengths you’ll go to woo a Telmarine…” Peter shakes his head dramatically.

“C’mon!” Giving up on denying, Edmund whines. “How many Telamarines have you met that aren’t spoiled arses?”

“And has ‘beautiful hair’, apparently,” Lucy teases, ducking out of Edmund’s reach. Which was unnecessary, as Edmund responds by simply banging his head on the counter.

“The whole time he was here I just wanted to run my hands through that hair!” He wails. His siblings look at each other with surprise.

“This is more serious than I thought!” Lucy stage-whispers.

“So much for Edmund Pevensie, business prodigy.” Peter whispers back, equally dramatically.

Susan leaves the kitchen and walks into the now-empty shop front. “What about Edmund?” She asks.

“Edmund is besotted~” Lucy sing-songs.

“Am not!” Edmund raises his head to protest.

Susan doesn’t look surprised, or impressed. “Just make sure you know what you’re doing.” She says.

Edmund lays his head back down and groans.

* * *

True to his promise, Caspian comes to Brits every single day after his first visit. He would taste-test every kind of baked goods Susan makes, dutifully swallowing every bite (Edmund _swears_ there were tears in Caspian’s eyes that time he spends a whole five minutes chewing the too-dry almond scone), and always finishes the special drinks Edmunds experiments with, which never fails to fill Edmund with a flooding sense of satisfaction and warmth.

"I spent the whole summer modifying the recipe for this," Edmund tells Caspian one day as he sets down a cup of peppermint mocha, "Yet only five people has tasted it, and only one of them is not a Pevensie."

Caspian pauses, the cup raised half-way to his mouth.

"Pevensie? _Narnia Corp_ Pevensie?" He asks, eyes wide.

"...Yes?"

"No wonder all four of you study business.” Caspian says, contemplative, setting down his coffee. “So... wait. Do you _own_ this cafe?”

“No. At least not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“It’s kind of a compromise.” Edmund answers, staring at the table, “I wanted to make coffee, but my family, well, everyone thinks we’re born to do business. Owning a coffee shop is the closest compromise I can get.”

Edmund doesn’t look up, his fingers fidgeting. He feels odd that he’s so uncomfortable admitting his heritage to Caspianーthere is nothing to be ashamed of, _Narnia Corp_ is one of those big names that are never contaminated by scandals or corruption. Still, he can’t help the part of his brain that worries if Caspian will see him differently when he knows Edmund is one of the heirs to a billion-dollar company.

“That’s amazing.” Caspian says after a while. Edmund’s head snaps up to see Caspian sipping at his cup of peppermint mocha, smile in his eyes. “I’m glad you decided to do this. Wouldn’t be fair to deprive the world of this masterpiece.”

Despite his casual words, Caspian’s eyes are solemn and understanding. Feeling a huge weight dissipate from his chest, Edmund allows himself to smile widely at Caspian, and is rewarded with a fond grin.

“Wait ‘til you try my gingerbread latte.” He says giddily. Caspian laughs.

* * *

“I am just- I wonder if- Do you- Would you like to go on a date with me?”

“We’ve been meeting in a cafe everyday for almost a month.”

“...True. Erm, would you like to go on a date somewhere else with me?”

“Let me just fetch my things.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that this chapter is so much shorter than the last... It just somehow ended up like that??


End file.
